Wimax Certification Process

The certification program kicked of in mid-2005 at an independent lab, Cetecom in Spain and of recent the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) in Korea has been added as the second certification lab. The first certified products were announced in January 2006. As of May 2006, fourteen products have been certified and more are expected to be announced soon. WiMAX Forum Certified products have been tested to show that they comply with the standards and that they interoperate with certified products from other vendors, hence Network operators can safely buy certified equipment without conducting further tests, with assurance that future product versions will be backward compatible with the equipment they have currently deployed.

The WiMAX Forum Certified program defines how standards will be implemented in products, i.e. certification profiles are defined by spectrum band, channelization and duplexing. and are required for interoperability, it Reduces overall costs by promoting economies of scale, Increases competition in the market. i.e. an open-standards approach coupled with interoperability testing greatly encourages the entry into the market of low-cost and high-volume component and equipment vendors, which will lead to further price reductions.

The certification process of the WiMax technology brings a lot of benefits to several stakeholders in the BWA sector, to the service provider:

• Multiple vendor: The certification program Service providers can choose equipment from multiple vendors and not depending on a single vendor, thus gaining additional flexibility in planning or extending their deployments. . Adoption of certified products will enable operators to transition smoothly to a different vendor, without having to replace the equipment already deployed.

• Low Product price: Increased market competition and economies of scale will bring down equipment price.

• Backward compatibility. The assurance that new products will work with existing ones facilitates network planning and reduces the financial risk for operators.

Component and equipment vendors also benefits as well by:

• Gaining access to a wider market: Lower prices, increased market competition and more flexibility for operators will greatly increase the demand for WiMAX equipment and create a larger opportunity for vendors.

• Achieving lower production costs: lower production costs can be achieved due to economies of scale and higher sales volumes.

•Addressing requirements from network operators. Operators often demand vendor interoperability as a condition for deploying a technology. Certification makes it possible to meet this requirement without additional, expensive ad-hoc tests.
• Early removal of interoperability barrier: Certification allows vendors to address any interoperability issues before bringing a product to the market, at a stage where they are easier and less expensive to resolve.